Published 4:00 am, Monday, March 2, 1998

1998-03-02 04:00:00 PDT BAY AREA -- As a psychologist, Nancy Olesen knows better than anybody how the daily traffic jams on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in Marin County can drive a person crazy.

The 52-year-old therapist, whose office in San Anselmo can be reached only via the congested boulevard, often finds herself at its mercy.

"I don't schedule people during commute times because they will arrive 20 minutes late and feel very angry," said Olesen, who lives in San Geronimo and commutes on Sir Francis Drake. "If someone can only come during commute hours, I schedule them with another psychologist closer to the freeway."

Olesen is one of a growing number of Bay Area residents who have had to make adjustments in their lives to deal with a huge influx of traffic on rural and residential streets and roadways.

Sir Francis Drake is one of the busiest streets in Marin County, but it is only one of hundreds of congested roadways in the Bay Area. The car problem is getting worse in virtually every community as clogged freeways force motorists onto arterial streets.

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Commuters are snaking through neighborhoods, clogging business districts, winding up mountain roads and

generally rumbling around where they aren't wanted in search of the elusive shortcut.

"Traffic is like water -- it finds the path of least resistance," said Colin Jones, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation. "The problem is, a lot of times that path doesn't exist anymore."

The situation has confounded traffic engineers as the frequently competing

interests of residents, businesspeople and commuters collide and counties push different agendas on how to deal with the problem.

Marin County helped set a Bay Area-wide trend in the late 1960s when it rejected a proposed freeway to Point Reyes that would have bypassed Sir Francis Drake.

Since then, residents around the bay have made it clear in poll after poll that they do not want more freeways. Instead, they want commuter railroads and more BART extensions, wishes that would take many years to grant even if the money were available.

Meanwhile, the lack of freeway capacity has left motorists with only one alternative to the maddening commuter's grind -- taking their cars to the side streets.

ROAD-BUILDING LAGS BEHIND

Since 1980, the state's population has grown by 64 percent and the number of people driving has grown by nearly 40 percent, but road capacity has grown less than 10 percent, according to the California Department of Transportation.

Part of the burden is being borne by Contra Costa County, where motorists from new developments to the east have turned once-rural Kirker Pass and Ygnacio Valley roads into a car-choked commute route.

The route, which starts in Pittsburg and bypasses Highway 4 and Interstate 680 into Walnut Creek, is so packed during commute hours that Walnut Creek has put in metering lights at the city limits to prevent gridlock.

John Hall, the transportation administrator for Walnut Creek, said an average of 57,500 cars a day used Ygnacio Valley Road in 1982. Last year, 74,000 a day squeezed onto the roadway.

"There isn't a worse road that I know of," said Mike Foisy, 34, who commutes from his home in Antioch to his telecommunications job in Walnut Creek. "I'm on that road for an hour to an hour and a half every day, just to go 20 to 25 miles. It's rather ridiculous."

CROWDED COUNTRY ROADS

Pleasant Hill Road to Lafayette is another route that commuters take to avoid I-680 on their way west. That road has gotten so crowded that desperate motorists leaving Pleasant Hill are now snaking onto Reliez Valley Road, a winding country lane at the base of the hills.

In southern Alameda County, Highway 84 between Livermore and Sunol is plagued every day with a long queue of cars trying to avoid the horrific Sunol Grade on I-680. The number of cars on the two-lane highway has nearly doubled since 1986.

"It sometimes takes me 20 minutes to go two miles," said Craig Whichard, 39, who commutes from his home in Livermore to his job at Cypress Semiconductor in San Jose. "I carpool with two other people, but that just allows us to share the pain."

Solano and Sonoma counties have Highway 37, where the number of daily vehicles has risen from 16,000 in 1986 to 25,000 in 1996. More traffic and more accidents are also plaguing Highways 12, 116 and 121 in Sonoma County.

CITIES SEEK SOLUTIONS

Virtually every street and road near a freeway or business district in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties is awash in commute traffic.

As automobiles pour onto the streets, city officials try to accommodate residents complaining about their neighborhoods being overrun by the honking hordes.

Lafayette has been considering widening Mount Diablo Boulevard, doing away with curbside parking and adding stoplights to soothe community outrage over the use of the thoroughfare by commuters from Moraga who use it to get to and from Highway 24.

Commuters who tear through residential streets in Oakland now run into speed bumps installed on hundreds of city blocks at the behest of fed-up residents.

In Berkeley, officials are grappling with ways to improve traffic flow on perennially jammed Ashby, San Pablo, College and University avenues without taking away residential parking.

But different communities sometimes want different things. A city with a strong commercial district may want motorists to stop and look around, while a neighboring residential community may want them to pass through as inconspicuously as possible.

The unsynchronized stoplights on El Camino Real in Menlo Park coincidentally bring traffic to a stop right in the middle of the town's business district. Residents regularly complain about being forced to sit idling with commuters.

"Yes, it's a source of congestion, but we're caught in a balancing act," said Don Dey, the transportation manager for Menlo Park. "We like an active downtown area, but at the same time we don't want to choke the roadway so much that it's undesirable for residents and the people driving through."

CONFLICTING APPROACHES

Traffic projects and priorities are increasingly being handled by county governments, thanks to a state law that allows local jurisdictions to control three-quarters of the available transportation funds.

Although local control allows communities to address unique problems, it can also create conflict between counties and hamper solutions to regional problems.

San Francisco, whose narrow downtown streets were built before the automobile, has always rejected freeways and instead concentrates on mass transportation. The most congested streets are Main Street downtown and Junipero Serra Boulevard, which parallels 19th Avenue and connects to Interstate 280.

Santa Clara County, on the other hand, has embraced highways and rejected mass transit options like BART. An extensive system of expressways runs through a sprawling metropolis of interconnected cities that feed the freeways.

As a result, cars regularly clog the expressways and feeder streets, a testament to the contention that more highways mean more traffic.

The key to unclogging the streets, according to traffic engineers, is for communities to come together to find alternatives to driving. That way the sacrifices that people such as Olesen are making for the opportunity to live in a community without a freeway are not in vain.

"Sometimes when I'm sitting in traffic," Olesen said, "I think to myself, 'This is the price I pay for living in such a beautiful place.' "

SHARING YOUR DRIVING TRICKS

Do you have any favorite shortcuts, lane-change maneuvers or tricks you use when you're really late? How about tips on how to decide when to use an alternate route? We'd like to write about them.

If you'd like to be quoted, please leave your full name, city of residence and a daytime phone number. If you don't want your friends and neighbors to find out that you are sharing their secrets, it's fine to remain anonymous.

ON KRON TONIGHT

On tonight's 11 o'clock newscast on KRON (Channel 4), reporter Mark Jones wraps up his two-part series on "Dead End Short Cuts" with a look at how cities and counties are dealing with the problem of congested roads.